Achievement

The interdisciplinary approach to this project not only provided the whole genome of an emerging model organism for the study of co-evolution, mimicry and adaptation, it helped identify key genomic elements that through hybridization and introgression have allowed beneficial traits to be transferred among different species. This achievement is an example of one of the goals of our IGERT - determine how the genomes of non-model organisms interact with their environment to generate biological diversity. (The Heliconius Consortium. 2012. Butterfly genome reveals promiscuous exchange of mimicry adaptations among species. Nature 487:94-98. doi:10.1038/nature11041.)